


panem et circenses

by electrumqueen



Series: Spartacus: Panem et Circenses [1]
Category: Spartacus Series (TV), Spartacus: Blood and Sand
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, F/M, Gen, Origin Story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-10
Updated: 2013-03-10
Packaged: 2017-12-04 21:30:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/715299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/electrumqueen/pseuds/electrumqueen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Hunger Games</i> fusion. They call him Bringer of Rain, because his arena was a desert. They call him <i>Spartacus</i>, after a long-ago warrior; they call him <i>Victor</i>, and rest the heavy crown upon his brow.</p>
            </blockquote>





	panem et circenses

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Deathmallow, for flailing about this with me! Universe building is the most fun.

They call him Bringer of Rain, because his arena was a desert. They call him  _Spartacus_ , after a long-ago warrior; they call him  _Victor,_  and rest the heavy crown upon his brow.  
  
Never do they ask his name; never do they offer him a choice.  
  
  
  
Before he left, she pressed her mouth to his ear and whispered,  _kill them all._  
  
Now when he dreams of her those words are all he hears, echoing and echoing till he has drowned in them.  
  
  
  
It was the Capitol man who chose him - Gaius Claudius Glaber, wearing a sword too heavy for him at his hip, lips crossed with a smirk too unprepared for the reality of the wilderness beyond the fences. Glaber who swore he would bring them food, would make sure Twelve's children did not starve this winter, if only he could be guided through the wilds to the remains of District Thirteen. It was Glaber who wrote down his name (the old name, the name of the man she loved), Glaber who whispered  _welcome to the Capitol_ when he stepped off the train.  
  
He does not think it was Glaber who gave the order, or Glaber who stepped into the little house that smelt of woodsmoke, curing meat and drying herbs. It would not have been Glaber who looked at the girl kneeling by the fire praying for Twelve’s boy-tribute’s safe return and slit her throat; Glaber has not the stomach nor the foresight.  
  
For Glaber, taking him was not a cruelty. It was a matter of whim; easily forgotten.  
  
  
  
_I love you,_  she whispered,  _I love you above all things, beyond all things._  
  
He pressed his hand to her cheek, helpless, as though if they willed hard enough they would fuse into one person, one safe infinite being, beyond all of this.  
__  
Come back to me, she told him.  
  
He swore he would.  
  
  
  
You are allowed one thing in the arena: one thing to remind you of home.  
  
He lost the scrap of fabric she bound about his arm on the operating table; the escort told him it was cut off when they dealt to his dehydration, to all the infections; that it was necessary, or he’d have scarred.  
  
He would have borne a thousand scars if it meant he could keep even the barest solid memory of her, proof that she existed, once upon a time.  
  
Proof that she ripped that cloth from her skirt and pressed it to his skin, that her deft fingers bound the knot, that she kissed his skin and whispered  _you are the only one I will ever love._  
  
Proof that she was killed to prove something to him.  
  
  
  
They call him the Bringer of Rain because his arena was a desert and when he killed the hulking boy from District Two the sky went dark and stormclouds opened. They murmur about the theatre of it, how aesthetically minded is that Gamesmaker, Gaius Claudius Glaber.  
  
They do not know why the girl from District Twelve died (they do not know that she died; they would have to know that she had ever lived for that), but he does:  
  
He held up a shield and the light reflected into Theokeles’ eyes, blinding him so he could slit his throat, so Theokeles’ head could detach from his body with one last stunned blink. But that is not the only thing that the light hit; it also struck a transmitter which, unprepared for that much heat, spasmed into death, breaking the forcefield surrounding the arena, the forcefield that kept the dry air in and the rainstorms out.  
  
The boy they called Spartacus held up a shield and showed the Capitol that they were vulnerable and for that -  
  
For that he must be punished.  
  
  
  
He woke in the white room with the taste of antiseptic in his mouth, with bandages all around him and an overwhelming lack of thirst, a foreign sensation after so many days parched. The escort, Quintus Lentulus Batiatus, pressed a dry hand to his; for the cameras it was to be a consoling gesture, a motion of support, but he knew it for what it was: a threat.  
__  
I know what you did.  
  
He did not even know what it was that he had done to anger them. Not for a long time.  
  
  
  
There was a boy with him from District One; a boy with kind eyes and a warm laugh, a boy who said  _I volunteered for the Training Centre to pay my family’s debts,_ who paused a little, voice dropping to murmur,  _I did not think they would choose me._  His name was Varro and he smiled as though his heart was not breaking, whose whole face lit up when he spoke of the girl he loved.  
  
(The boy who would be Spartacus knew more than to speak of the girl in the forest but he should have known better than to think silence would protect her: there is nothing about you the Capitol does not know, if it cares to hurt you.)  
  
Varro was the last of the other tributes to survive and he whispered,  _swear to me you will look after Aurelia,_ and then he took Spartacus’ sword between his palms and thrust it between his lungs. The blood he choked on was red, so red, the kind of red you dream about drowning in.  
  
Varro had known, then, that to enter the arena is to be destroyed by them as long as you live, to have all those you love destroyed by them; he had known, too, that Aurelia was pregnant.  
  
On the Victory Tour she came to him, a girl in a white dress with a babe in arms. For the cameras she said, “He wanted it to be you,” so the Capitol citizens would watch and thrill at the friendship that had formed between two such unlikely boys, and in his ear she whispered, _he and I did not want the arena for his son._  
  
  
  
He is almost sure it was Quintus Lentulus Batiatus who killed her. If it was not his hand that struck the blow it was surely his order; surely his ambition that wished Spartacus to be a malleable, obedient Victor, to bring honour to the District Batiatus had been given as punishment, as recognition of incompetence.  
  
Batiatus knew nothing of the girl by the hearth; he thought her death would mean  _do as I command or suffer the consequences._  
  
  
  
Sura’s body was cool when he stepped into the little house, wrapped in the Capitol finery they had thrust upon him. He had the crown in his hand, in his left hand to give to her, to say  _I thought of you, only you, that is what gave me strength all those days_  but it fell, metal ringing twice on the dirt floor before was stilled by the dust. His knees gave out as they had not given in all those days of no water, only blood; he hit the ground with only her grey laid-bare throat before his eyes.  
  
He pressed a shaking hand to hers and the chill of her flesh flooded his own, stilled the beat of his heart, stilled his own breathing and froze him there, to the ground.  
  
He closed his eyes and heard her voice:  
_  
__Kill them all._


End file.
